In a New York Minute

July 9 11pm

I will still never get used to how quickly something can change. During our visit today it seemed as if we may have strung together two good days in a row. Tyler seemed to be doing very well. He is now up to 12 ml on his feeding. His stats keep fluctuating, but nothing outside of his usual parameters. He was doing well. Parker had been fluctuating quite a bit more. Still struggling, even though the anti-biotics seem to be working. His fluctuations were more extreme then usual and his necessary oxygen input higher than normal, but he still seemed like he was doing okay. Then it happened again, but this time was much worse. Two days ago I described the episode where Parker desatted. To desat means the saturation of oxygen in his blood goes down. The sat (or saturation rate) should be in the upper 80's to low 90's. Two days ago he desatted down to 24 which means there was only 24% oxygen saturation rate in his blood.....critically low. Our nurse, Allison, quickly brought him back up. The experience seemed to last forever and was horrible. Today was worse. He was doing fine, when out of nowhere it dropped like a rock. 50's....then 40's.....then 20's......in less than a minute he was down to 5......yes 5.......he turned a terrifiying purple color and for the first time (even though she covered it well) I saw true worry in Allison. He dropped like a rock and stayed there. She cranked his oxygen input up to 100%......there is nowhere to go above that......yet still Parker didn't recover. He remained a deep purple as she went through everything she could......clearing his air line, his airway checking everything that could be checked.....still no response.....then she reached for the bag to begin "bagging" him as she called the doctor for help. She had run out of options of things she could do and he was still purple. All we could do is watch. The doctor was coming and Allison continued to make adjustments......then as suddenly as he dropped he simply started recovering..... Not very quickly though.....by the time the doctor arrived he was up to 50(still a very scary number, but better than 5) but had seemingly leveled off. As they spoke about what to do he slowly creeped back up and finally arrived back into the 70's. Why???????? Welcome to the unknown roller coaster of the NICU. There are theories.......they did an x-ray......they took more blood for more tests......but the bottom line is they really may never know. I thought 24 was bad. 5 and a purple baby boy less than 2 pounds is something I can really do without ever seeing again. During our late night phone call, he seemed to have recovered and had settled in. He is still fluctuated quite a bit, but they said nothing like today's scare. Here's hoping for consistency.